Need to get around SSL: CERTIFICATE_VERIFY_FAILED

[sawtooth500]

I'm trying to connect to the API at polygon.io to download historical stock trades data - the below is sample API code provided from polygon.io so it should work -

from polygon import RESTClient

# docs
# https://polygon.io/docs/stocks/get_v3_trades__stockticker
# https://polygon-api-client.readthedocs.io/en/latest/Trades.html#polygon.RESTClient.list_trades

# Trade data refers to the tick records of individual transactions that have
# taken place in a financial market, such as the price, size, and time of
# each trade. It provides a high-frequency, granular view of market activity,
# and is used by traders, investors, and researchers to gain insights into
# market behavior and inform their investment decisions.

# client = RESTClient("XXXXXX") # hardcoded api_key is used
client = RESTClient("REDACTED")  # POLYGON_API_KEY environment variable is used

trades = []
for t in client.list_trades("IBIO", "2023-02-01", limit=50000):
    trades.append(t)

# prints each trade that took place
print(trades)

When I run this (I'm on windows 11 and python 3.12.2) I get the following error:

Error:
PS C:\Users\thpfs\documents\python\polygon> python trades.py
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "C:\Users\thpfs\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python312\Lib\site-packages\urllib3\connectionpool.py", line 715, in urlopen
    httplib_response = self._make_request(
                       ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "C:\Users\thpfs\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python312\Lib\site-packages\urllib3\connectionpool.py", line 404, in _make_request
    self._validate_conn(conn)
  File "C:\Users\thpfs\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python312\Lib\site-packages\urllib3\connectionpool.py", line 1058, in _validate_conn
    conn.connect()
  File "C:\Users\thpfs\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python312\Lib\site-packages\urllib3\connection.py", line 419, in connect
    self.sock = ssl_wrap_socket(
                ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "C:\Users\thpfs\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python312\Lib\site-packages\urllib3\util\ssl_.py", line 449, in ssl_wrap_socket
    ssl_sock = _ssl_wrap_socket_impl(
               ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "C:\Users\thpfs\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python312\Lib\site-packages\urllib3\util\ssl_.py", line 493, in _ssl_wrap_socket_impl
    return ssl_context.wrap_socket(sock, server_hostname=server_hostname)
           ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "C:\Users\thpfs\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python312\Lib\ssl.py", line 455, in wrap_socket
    return self.sslsocket_class._create(
           ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "C:\Users\thpfs\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python312\Lib\ssl.py", line 1042, in _create
    self.do_handshake()
  File "C:\Users\thpfs\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python312\Lib\ssl.py", line 1320, in do_handshake
    self._sslobj.do_handshake()
ssl.SSLCertVerificationError: [SSL: CERTIFICATE_VERIFY_FAILED] certificate verify failed: certificate has expired (_ssl.c:1000)

During handling of the above exception, another exception occurred:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "C:\Users\thpfs\documents\python\polygon\trades.py", line 17, in <module>
    for t in client.list_trades("IBIO", "2023-02-01", limit=50000):
  File "C:\Users\thpfs\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python312\Lib\site-packages\polygon\rest\base.py", line 215, in _paginate_iter
    resp = self._get(
           ^^^^^^^^^^
  File "C:\Users\thpfs\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python312\Lib\site-packages\polygon\rest\base.py", line 121, in _get
    resp = self.client.request(
           ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "C:\Users\thpfs\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python312\Lib\site-packages\urllib3\request.py", line 77, in request
    return self.request_encode_url(
           ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "C:\Users\thpfs\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python312\Lib\site-packages\urllib3\request.py", line 99, in request_encode_url
    return self.urlopen(method, url, **extra_kw)
           ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "C:\Users\thpfs\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python312\Lib\site-packages\urllib3\poolmanager.py", line 376, in urlopen
    response = conn.urlopen(method, u.request_uri, **kw)
               ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "C:\Users\thpfs\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python312\Lib\site-packages\urllib3\connectionpool.py", line 827, in urlopen
    return self.urlopen(
           ^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "C:\Users\thpfs\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python312\Lib\site-packages\urllib3\connectionpool.py", line 827, in urlopen
    return self.urlopen(
           ^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "C:\Users\thpfs\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python312\Lib\site-packages\urllib3\connectionpool.py", line 827, in urlopen
    return self.urlopen(
           ^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "C:\Users\thpfs\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python312\Lib\site-packages\urllib3\connectionpool.py", line 799, in urlopen
    retries = retries.increment(
              ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "C:\Users\thpfs\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python312\Lib\site-packages\urllib3\util\retry.py", line 592, in increment
    raise MaxRetryError(_pool, url, error or ResponseError(cause))
urllib3.exceptions.MaxRetryError: HTTPSConnectionPool(host='api.polygon.io', port=443): Max retries exceeded with url: /v3/trades/IBIO?timestamp=2023-02-01&limit=50000 (Caused by SSLError(SSLCertVerificationError(1, '[SSL: CERTIFICATE_VERIFY_FAILED] certificate verify failed: certificate has expired (_ssl.c:1000)')))

So doing some googling I found that [SSL: CERTIFICATE_VERIFY_FAILED] is kind of a common error... and polygon.io support isn't exactly helpful in helping me get this resolved... but basically for whatever reason my machine can't verify the authenticity of the SSL certificate being used by api.polygon.io

I tried in case my computer had old certificates

pip install –upgrade certifi

But no joy, that did not solve the problem.

There are also a bunch of solutions on the net about how to bypass SSL verification, I tried a couple but none of them seemed to work. I don't have access to the actual code generating the error - it's embedded in the polygon module which is a pip install provided by polygon.io.

I'd prefer to verify the cert, but absent that I'm totally fine bypassing the verification process. Yes, I know that make it less secure by exposing the connection to man-in-the-middle attacks, etc... but other than my API key there is nothing sensitive being sent, it's just historical stock data that I need to pay for. FYI I'm pulling down tick level data, I can't get this from any free provider like yahoo finance so I'm stuck using polygon.